Where best to put your audio dollars

How do you proportion your audio dollars? For you what is the biggest bang for the buck? The component that makes the most difference? Least? How would you proportion the contribution to overall sound for each component? What do you consider the starting price for a competent component in a given product class? For example, what is the starting price for you to get into a really good speaker?

Here are my rankings with percentages:
Home Theater

1. Speakers: 60%
2. Room: 20%
3. Amplifier: 10%
4. Processor (including DAC): 9%
5. Everything else (Cables, Rack, Blu-ray player, etc.): 1%

2-Channel

1. Speaker: 58%
2. Room: 18%
3. Source (DAC, Turntable, Cartridge, etc.): 12%
4. Amplifier: 6%
5. Preamplifier: 5%
6. Everything else:1%

As you can see, for 2 channel I've shifted some of the value from the speakers, room, amplifier, and preamplifier to the source. It isn't because those components are less audible in 2-channel, but because the audible benefits of better DAC's or especially better turntables and associated vinyl playback equipment is greater. I've not found that a really amazing audiophile grade DAC is all that audible above the more standard DAC's in a lot of HT gear for movies but I do hear it for music.

I've also placed importance on sound quality above all else, so I put very little value (budget wise) on ease of use. Otherwise I would dedicate more budget to things like the Blu-Ray player or processor. In my own theater, factoring in the cost of subs, roughly 48% of my budget went toward speakers relative to what I spent on the audio portion of the theater (so excluding the projector and screen, HDMI cables, etc.) and room. If you take the room out it would be 67%. A sound proof room is REALLY expensive.

For me Speakers are A number 1 most important. They set the baseline for sound quality. No matter how good everything else is, they can't make the speakers any better than they are. The vast majority of budget should go there. Room is number 2 and I think is way more important than I think people realize. Since rooms are typically pre-built (as most use an existing space) the cost is in-kind but that doesn't mean its value isn't there for sound quality. The room and speaker interact together to give you the sound you hear and so the room impacts the sound quality of the speaker greatly.

So how about you?

Todd Anderson said:

I share Tony's garbage sentiment, and would probably pour more cash into the processor/amp category. I think my percentages for an initial purchase would look like:

Speakers: 40%
Amp/Processor/AVR: 40%
Source/Cables: 5%
Room: 15%

Although, I think the room is fairly important... maybe worthy of a higher percentage?

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The room is tricky. At low frequencies, the room and speakers contribute at least equally to the sound. In fact, you could easily argue the room contributes more to the sound of the LF's than do the speakers themselves, that wouldn't be so far fetched. So from the standpoint of sound quality contribution, room is huge, probably more like 40% of the sound quality equation. However, we are talking about dollar allocation here and rooms are typically already in existence, few people do what I did and build a room for sound. That means that dollar allocation can go down quite a bit because standard small rooms are already pretty decent for good sound. If its a rectangular room with good symmetry, carpeted floors, etc. you could get away with just some LF treatments, bass traps, and not much else.

As for the your allocation, I like seeing the difference show up based on priorities. Out of curiosity, does that match the dollar allocation of your room too?

JBrax said:

It looks like I’m in the minority here but I don’t think the allocation percentages are high enough for speakers. Might be interesting for all of us to actually sit down and break this down to the real percentages spent on our setups.

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My theater room build ended up being pretty expensive and would throw off my ratios.

Rough Estimate

Speakers: 40%
Theater Room: 38%
Processor: 2% ( have been suggesting I need to upgrade this for a while)
Amplifiers: 10.5%
Everything else: 9.5%

The everything else category is high because of my turntable. If not for the turntable, phono stage, and phono cartridge, more than half of that pot would be wiped out.

Yeah and this discussion conflates the importance of the room with the cost of the room. Since mixed purpose rooms may have minimal cost, their dollar ratio is minimal even though the room such a pivitol role in sound quality. At low frequencies the room sound dominates over the direct source.

Tony V. said:

And some like myself have built up the room in stages over a long time and gotten deals along the way to offset the cost. For example two of my 3 EVs were given to me I only had to buy the center channel.

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For the purposes of this discussion, since the point is to help think about where money is best spent for the best sound, I think we should not consider free items as free. Use retail value. I too have been given things for free or at a discount, but that wouldn't make for a very compelling story of sound quality. Even large discounts won't really make sense, that is just a bonus. For example, if we suggest that the average person should spent 60% of their money on speakers, and that leads to a budget of $6000, if they can identify a $6000 pair of speakers for a highly discounted price of $5000, well great! Then they saved some money, but the allocation concept remains the same.

Also as things are built up, I think that just increases the total resources expended on a system, so you just have to re-tally the total. A lot of people want to know what it takes to achieve what we built up as a turnkey solution. They don't want to go through the process we went through to achieve that sound.

I also think there are concepts in the audiophile world (more so than in home theater, but experts do pay attention to this in home theater too) that are so tied to the room that they can't be ignored. For example, the term resolution or resolving ability means the ability of a system to reproduce everything that is in the original signal. Some of that is the frequency response, reproducing all of the sounds from the lowest lows to the highest highs. However, I think we tend to think of it more as the ability to reproduce those subtle sounds near the silence of the recording that can be hard to hear. That requires a low noise floor and because most rooms do not have a very low noise floor, a given listening level is always limited by its noise floor. Take for example a recording in which the quietest sound on the track is 60db's below the loudest peaks, and imagine that your volume level is set such that the loudest peak is reproduced at 100db's (quite loud by most standards) then the quietest sound would be at 40db's. A general guide here is to look for 10db's of headroom between the noise floor (ambient noise level of the room) and the lowest sound level you want to reproduce. That is 30db's, much quieter than the average room. Sound proofing is expensive and the more soundproof you want it, the more the cost goes up for incremental improvements.

It's not so different from other tweaks to a system either. Once you hit a certain level, small improvements end up costing a small fortune.

Bass is another good example! Getting a system to play realistically loud down to 30hz is not so expensive. Down to 25hz, well maybe for $500-$1000 you could achieve that goal in most systems. Down to 20hz, maybe more like another $1500. Down to 10hz, now we are talking about big money. $3000-$5000 is not unreasonable for that.

AudiocRaver said:

Matt, agree with your dynamic range thoughts, and here is an impression that I have done no research on, having to do with the noise floor. Electronic noise in the system is much worse than acoustical noise, from the water heater, furnace, fridge, etc. I think. Probably because it is actually signal affecting the entire sound field. Agree that noise proofing is nice but not vital for good sound. I guess that is MY priority, others are free to disagree.

Emphasis on speakers is definitely a good idea. I was thinking of $2500 of a $5000 budget. There are some killer speakers at that price and below, so it seems realistic.

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I agree that electronic noise floor seems to be a more egregious issue than the room for some reason. I too have no proof, but I have products that have much lower noise floors than my room, yet in practice I can hear the electronic noise floor anyway. Having said that, even a $200 receiver seems to have a very good noise floor anymore. Not universally true of course. I have a classic Pioneer surround receiver from about 10 years ago, it has noticeable hiss. I have an onkyo receiver from around 6-7 years ago, it is quieter than my Acurus A200. So much so I've often wondered if it had some kind of built in noise gate.

I agree that you can get some great speakers for that price point, but I do think more achieves an important technical milestone.

Are we talking passable high end sound or state of the art performance? That is maybe not a question we need to answer per say.

However, my belief is that a state of the art speaker has a flat anechoic response that has a smooth and flat (as much as possible) falling response off to the sides. That puts a damper on a lot of otherwise good speakers. The best that I know of are the Gedlee speakers, but they are not available anymore and there are now others that can achieve very close performance. The JBL M2's are the best commonly available, but are way out of the price range mentioned. There are also the Genelec SAM Coaxial series, the best currently available, again pretty expensive. The lower end Genelec's are no slouch either. There are also the Neuman's, QSC RSC-112, Pro Audio Technology speakers, etc. All of these speakers are quite expensive and there aren't cheaper speakers with the same performance unfortunately. Controlled directivity and good sound combined is just expensive apparently.

For under $1500 per speaker, the biggest issue is either a loss of fidelity or a loss of output. It seems that many cheaper speakers with excellent controlled directivity are either very limited in output or have compromised sound quality (rough response, distortion, etc.). Of course this is a performance requirement of mine, not a budget requirement. Others may not care about controlled directivity, and there are many speakers with high enough output and good sound.

Ok so you know where this needs to go now, I think we each need to put up our Turnkey surround system for a given budget.

Let's make it hard:

What is your ideal sound system recommendation for the following price points:
$2000

$10,000

$50,000

Don't include projectors or video, that is separate. Also, up to you if you want to include room expenses, but let's assume that most people have a multi-use room (or extra room) that needs no upgrades to be a base level room. I suggest using retail pricing for all products. You can use DIY as a means to achieve more for less, but you have to do so in a fair manner. Include realistic costs for materials. No used equipment though, sorry. That is too much of an unknown.

Ok here is my $2000 DIY budget theater:

Speakers: 45%

• Parts Express C-Note kit (3 pairs) $300
• Parts Express Sub-1500 (4 units) $594

Receiver: 15%

• Onkyo TX-NR575 $299

Blu-ray Player: 10% (I spent more on this due to functionality. I've had issues with the really cheap Blu-ray players, even though there is no difference in sound/fidelity)

• Sony UBP-X700 $200

Cables (other): 7.5%

• Various Parts Express or Mono-price $150
• Speaker cable should be in-wall type as its twisted pair, 12 gauge preferred

Acoustics (Room): 15%

• Mini-DSP 2x4 $105
• DIY Treatments $200

Misc (Speaker finishing costs: Paint, glue): 7.5%

• $150 (Includes speaker stands)

Total: $1998

I think this is an excellent surround system for $2000 and would provide really good non-fatiguing sound. The speakers have a nice flat response and good off-axis response. Their biggest drawback would be in output and lack of bass. However, while they won't quite reach THX reference levels (105db's at the listening position per speaker, they will achieve close to that at about 101db's. That peak output can be increased slightly due to the three(yes three) 15" subwoofers. By using 3 pairs (6 total) of the C-Note speakers, you have perfectly matched speakers which will make for a perfectly balanced soundfield. There will be one extra speaker which could be used as a single rear surround, maybe single overhead speaker, or you could ask Parts Express to sell you 5 of the C-Notes. Also if you wanted to stretch the budget slightly, you could go with 4 pairs and use two on the ceiling as ATMOS speakers (or an inexpensive in ceiling speaker instead). The use of four subwoofers, a mini-dsp, and DIY treatments collectively addresses the room acoustics, providing much better than typical LF response shape. The three subs is not for output but for LF response smoothness. The 15" size is for output and depth. This is a DIY option however and some won't want or be able to complete the speaker kits.

I'll try to come up with a non-DIY option later but wanted to share this.

Tony V. said:

We have a topic going on this very subject here: https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/lets-build-a-dedicated-home-theater-system-for-1500.660/

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I think that thread is different. It includes video and the price point is quite different. It also doesn't start with the talk we had here which places these choices in context of sound quality importance. This is why I wanted to have a separate thread.

Tony V. said:

This setup here would be hard to beat for under 2K

Pioneer VSX-832
2 Pioneer Andrew Jones Designed Floorstanding Loudspeakers
2 Pioneer Dolby Atmos Bookshelf Speakers
All for $629
https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Pass...d=1521919311&sr=8-5&keywords=Andrew+jones+5.1

And that leaves plenty for a great sub and add a centre channel

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That receiver is an odd-duck only supporting 3.1.2. In other words, no rear surround if you want atmos. I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. I personally suggest a different receiver than that model. The one I suggested at least offers 5.1.2 which is kind of a bare minimum if you are going to do atmos.

I'm currently reviewing a pair of speakers that I feel are actually better than the pioneers. No tower is currently available, but the driver quality is quite a bit better and with a little tweaking, they offer better performance. All of these speakers are VERY inefficient and along with their lowish power handling (and the low power of the receivers) can't play very loud. They are all quite limited in room size, which is ok, but is something people need to keep in mind. I've seen these speakers used in spaces that are way too large for them and they just don't sound good in those scenarios. Like I would not use them in a space much larger than 1000 cubic feet, preferably more like 800-900 square feet at most.